PETALING JAYA: Global efforts to cut carbon emissions are moving more than five times too slowly to halt global warming, climate scientist and University of Exeter Global Systems Institute founding director Prof Tim Lenton said, calling for urgent action to accelerate the shift to clean energy and restore damaged ecosystems.
He added that governments must introduce policies to phase out fossil fuel technologies and replace them with cleaner alternatives to drive change as markets approach a tipping point.
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“We have to accelerate action to zero emissions to stop global warming as fast as we can.
“I think you’re aware that we’re not going fast enough. In fact, we’re going more than five times too slowly,” he said at the Global Tipping Points Conference 2026 at Sunway University yesterday.
Lenton said restoring degraded ecosystems could also help reverse environmental damage, citing the blocking of drainage channels in drained peatlands to raise water levels, support recovery and reduce the risk of fires that contribute to regional haze.
He described this as a positive tipping point, in which ecosystem recovery could become self-sustaining.
Sunway Centre for Planetary Health executive director Prof Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood said Asean could draw on its existing disaster management cooperation to strengthen regional efforts against haze and pollution.
She added that a newly released policy brief had been sent to embassies and ministries, with distribution to Asean officials and regional foreign ministers under way.
“We’ve done it before, we’ve been able to move on the disaster management front.
“This climate change, the haze, pollution, is a major disaster. This is the catastrophe of our times.”
Wellcome Trust climate and health director Alan Dangour said the organisation was stepping up efforts to engage communities by working with musicians, athletes and the media.
“We have to tell the story that climate change is an existential risk to our health. We know many of the solutions.
“We need to encourage society to stand up and talk about this, engage with this and ask its leaders to protect them.”
In his opening address, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research director Prof Johan Rockstrom said environmental systems could cross critical thresholds, triggering damaging changes that become self-reinforcing.
He added that safeguarding planetary stability was also essential to protecting human health, prosperity and livelihoods.
“This evidence shows us very clearly that linear change away from danger is no longer an option.
“We need to transform ourselves back into a safe operating space that avoids crossing such tipping points.”